Man, the boys must be coming down from the high of the camping trip.Â Yikes, what a day.Â They basically argued or fought all day, and never listened, of course.Â Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day, since we’ll be going out and trying to buy a present for Marnie.

I played with VMWare Server alot over the last two days.Â I’m running it under AMD64 based Gentoo, and it works quite well.Â I seem to have a problem running pre-made Appliances under it though, and I’m not quite sure why.Â I’ll figure it out.Â I found an appliance that will image a drive over the network, so I’m hoping to create a VMWare Server hosted from an existing system.

ReadingSoul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)– If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

WritingIf you’re interested in how a novel went from first draft to finished and published, this is a good read.

Not too much to say today.Â Yesterday was a mix of being rough and easy with the boys.Â They managed to find stuff to do most of the day (of course I helped), and didn’t miss the camping too much.Â But, no matter how busy I kept them, they still found time to get into a couple of fights/yelling matches.Â Fun for all!

I’m still trying to get the house back in order after the camping trip.Â Hopefully I can get all of it done before Marnie figures I’m slacking off too much.Â And, I may have been.Â I worked most of yesterday trying to get VMWare Server running under AMD64 Gentoo.Â It’s working now, and should let me bring my number of servers down a bit.Â I’m still not sure I want to though.Â Hmmm.

ReadingSoul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)– If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Wow, what a busy time since we got back. Gregor and I went out with Gav, then next day the whole family went out. We are getting ready for out holidays. I had to teach Gav how to take care of the house. Every minute of every day was filled, and I had no time for the blog, or for writing. Damn, I hope I don’t get too many of these days!

I spent the day in Calgary.Â Gregor lent me his car, so I managed to get to Chinook Mall to buy some gifts for my boys.Â I then spent the afternoon at Joey Tomatoes, reading and revising and outlining.

Right after Gregor got out of work, we loaded up his Gold TDI and started the drive back home.Â Right now, we are outside Medicine Hat, and my laptop is, you guessed it, on my lap.

I re-read the critiques of “Elya”, and this time it didn’t throw me into a funk.Â I made a list of the top concerns, and edited the story.Â The original is about 3000 words, but I deleted a scene or two, and added a bit more.Â It looks like I’ll be at about 5000 words for the next revision.Â We’ll see how it goes.

I packed Marnie and the kids into the van this morning.Â We were heading out to do some hiking in Whiteshell.Â There’s a nice easy trail called MacGillvary Trail, that I thought the kids would really enjoy.Â On the way there, we stopped at the Alfred Hole (yeah, A. Hole.Â Funny stuff for a simple mind like me) Goose Sanctuary.Â It’s mid summer and the number of geese was pretty small, only 145.

While we were there, we found that anything to do with the back country was shut down.Â No hiking, no canoeing, no nothing.Â We’ve been so hot and dry this year, that the fire hazard is EXTREME.Â So, they shut down all access.Â It’s better to be safe than sorry, I guess.Â They even blocked the trail around the lake at the Goose Sanctuary!

Once we found out, we decided to add an hour onto our drive and head to Kenora.Â They have this excellent ‘chip truck’ there.Â Fresh cut potatoes, deep fried to perfection.Â The best chips ever.Â And guess what?Â The chip truck was closed.Â They ran out of french fries.Â This was not turning out to be our day.

We ended up at a bar patio called Hap’s, and had some fries there.Â They were good!Â Then we drove home, put the kids into the tub, and relaxed for the evening.Â The boys were actually in bed at their regular time!

I don’t think I’ll normally post on weekends, but this blog is still new so here goes…

What a great day.Â The boys and I got along perfectly today, and we all had a fun time.Â I took them to coffee with me, since Marnie is in Miami, and they ate and played and had a wonderfull time.Â They never once asked to go home. When I finally said it was time to go, at about 3:00 PM, they were actually a tad upset.Â That would be 3 1/2 hours at a coffee shop.Â Well done.

After coffee, I had a kind of ‘adult withdrawal’.Â It’s been 4 days with just the boys, and I craved some more adult interaction.Â I love the boys to pieces, but for my sanity, I really need to maintain adult contact.Â When Jared was at school, it wasn’t too bad.Â I met the other parents when I dropped off and picked him up (plus some additional activities).Â The summer is a little bit harder.Â Maybe, as I mentioned in yesterdays post, routine is something I need as well.

So Gavin came over for supper (hot dogs) and beer.Â It was good to talk about adult stuff.Â The boys ended up sleeping together, and all is quiet.